As new entrant on the block Clubhouse App’s popularity soars, its primary feature of enabling audio-based chatrooms has giants like Facebook and Twitter looking to clone it or compete with it.
Clubhouse, a social networking app, has gained popularity for letting people gather in audio chat rooms to talk about various topics.
According to reports, Facebook is building an audio chat product similar to Clubhouse. Twitter, meanwhile, is testing out its new feature - Spaces- that allows up to 10 people to gather via an audio chat function.
The application, developed by Rohan Seth and Paul Davison, raised $100 million in January at a $1 billion valuation, according to PitchBook and has over two million weekly users.
Clubhouse, launched in April 2019, gained massive traction during the pandemic with high-profile celebrities using the platform. Owing to its popularity, the app has been kept ‘invite-only’ for the time being.
Many celebrities including Kanye West, Drake, Ashton Kutcher and Kevin Hart are active members on the app. This means that every Clubhouse user can get a chance to participate and engage in discussions with their favourite celebrities.
Facebook’s Plans to Compete with Clubhouse
Facebook’s interest in Clubhouse can also be gauged from Mark Zuckerberg’s own brief appearance on a nightly talk show on 14 February that is hosted on the app.
According to a New York Times report, Facebook executives have ordered employees to create a similar product. The product is in its earliest stages of development, people with knowledge of the development said, and the project’s code name could change, the NYT report said.
“We’ve been connecting people through audio and video technologies for many years and are always exploring new ways to improve that experience for people,” Emilie Haskell, a Facebook spokeswoman, said.
The move doesn’t come as a surprise, given the rise in the popularity voice-enabled platforms.
Facebook is also historically known for cloning its rivals’products. In 2016, Instagram rolled out its ‘stories’ feature that was copied from its rivals Snapchat that allows users to create and upload ephemeral videos. In 2020, it debuted its ‘reels’ feature, mimic-ing TikTok’s videos. As Zoom gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, Facebook launched its ‘rooms’ video chat service.
Twitter Spaces to Take on Clubhouse
The micro-blogging platform also plans to compete with Clubhouse with its feature called Spaces.
“Spaces is a place to come together, built around the voices of the people using Twitter, your Twitter community,” the platform states.
“Spaces are live for as long as they’re open; once ended, they will no longer be available publicly on Twitter.”
Spaces is currently only available on Twitter for iOS and is still in a beta testing phase.
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